Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans was a faction of the liberal US Republican Party that existed from 1854 to 1877, led by John C. Fremont, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and Ulysses S. Grant. The Radicals rivaled Abraham Lincoln's moderate Republicans and William H. Seward's conservative Republicans, and the Radical Republicans became a major force in the party during Reconstruction. The Radicals supported civil rights, equality, and voting rights for freed African-Americans, and they believed that harsh repurcussions should be executed against the American South and that ex-Confederates should be barred from office. In 1868, they failed to impeach the US Democratic Party President Andrew Johnson by just one vote, but they won power when Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson as president. The Radicals crushed the Ku Klux Klan in 1871 and ended the "Black Codes" in Louisiana, and the Radicals were disbanded at the end of Reconstruction in 1877.